Onetime social-networking leader Friendster has announced a new feature called "Fan Profiles," which is essentially a way for celebrities, bands, companies, nonprofit organizations and other entities to self-promote.

Among "early adopters" of the new feature are Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, comedian Dane Cook, and pop-punk band Fall Out Boy, all of which now have "fan profiles" on the social network.

It's an ambitious move for the struggling social network, but one that likely won't give it more traction in its struggle to reclaim the market share it's lost to Facebook and MySpace.com. Friendster, it should be noted, claims to have a solid footprint in the Asia-Pacific region (35 million of its 50 million users are based there), which led the company to introduce a Chinese version of the site earlier this week.

A "fan profile" is a separate kind of account than a regular Friendster profile and is listed differently in friends lists as a result. The interface is slightly different, and there are more robust features for contact list management and mass e-mails. Fan profiles are better optimized for Web searches like Yahoo and Google--which, on the flip side, means that this could be a dual move to boost Friendster's traffic.

And it appears that not just anyone can get one. There's a special page where artists and organizations can request Friendster fan profiles.